In A Cold Sweat

“Why you wanna get in touch with me?”

“’Cause I like the way you was lookin’ at me before you found out I was with Cash. I could tell you wanted me.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right. So, I was thinkin’ maybe you and I could get together sometime.”

“How would I know you wouldn’t be settin’ me up as revenge for killin’ your man?”

“You wouldn’t. But me and Cash wasn’t that deep. I had only been with him for a couple of months. The truth is, I just liked what he was doin’ for me.”

“I can get to that. A woman gotta do what a woman gotta do,” Black said to CeCe. She was right about one thing, he had thought about seeing her naked before he found out she was with Cash. “You just tell Stark what I said. Once this is settled, maybe I’ll get with you.”

“How will you find me?” CeCe asked.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find you when I want you,” Black said and left her standing there.

Once he found Bobby, the two left the club and headed back to their car. “Angee said Crazy Joe is out,” Black told Bobby.

“Wonderful. He still talkin’ ’bout killin’ you?”

“Yup.”

“That shit is crazy. He shoulda just waited for y’all to show up; not do the job by himself.”

“They don’t call him Crazy for nothin’,” Black said.

As they got closer to his car, Bobby’ saw an Acura coming at them fast. When he saw the gun come out window, he pushed Black to the ground and yelled, “Get down!”

Black and Bobby laid motionless as bullets rained over their heads. Once the car drove on, both men got up. “You all right?” Black asked.

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah. I’m all right, but this shit is gettin’ ridiculous. These kids gonna fuck around and make me start takin’ this shit to them.”

Chapter Twenty-three

It had been more than a week since detectives Kirk and Richards paid a visit to Mike Black. And since then, nothing had happened to bring them any closer to closing the murders, and Richards was getting a little frustrated.

Both Stark and BB had all but disappeared from public life. The day after K Murder’s death, BB scooped up all the drugs and money, picked up his girlfriend and drove out to Long Island to hide out at her cousin’s house in Wyandanch. Even his boyz didn’t know where he was, and he liked it that way.

When BB didn’t show up for K Murder’s funeral, Stark began thinking that maybe he had the right idea. After the funeral, CeCe told him that Black had come to see her and said he wanted to meet with him to settle things. He immediately became suspicious. “What the fuck is you sayin’?”

“Black said to tell you that he ain’t got no problem wit’ you, and he wanna sit down wit’ you to settle y’all’s differences.”

“What you mean Black came to you? How Black even know you?”

“He just walked up on me,” CeCe said.

“When was this?”

“This weekend, up on the avenue.”

Stark had heard that some of Cash’s boyz tried to hit Black on the avenue. Even if Black had told CeCe that he wanted to talk, them trying to kill him may have changed that. He suspected that if he went to that meeting, that he would be assassinated. “You tell Black that if he ain’t got no problems wit’ me, then I got none wit’ him. I won’t fuck wit’ him and what he do, he don’t fuck wit’ me and mine. You tell him that, but I ain’t goin’ to no damn meeting. That ain’t happenin’. You tell him I got nothin’ to do wit’ what Cash or K’s boyz do,” Stark said, and him and his boys walked away. The Commission was dead.

All CeCe could do was shake her head. Stark was practically shaking he was so scared of Black. All that, don’t fuck with me and mine, shit he was talking must have been for his boy’s benefit, because she wasn’t impressed.

Since that night, CeCe heard that Black had been to all the spots Stark hung out at that night. “That’s what you do when you got beef with somebody. You go lookin’ for him, not hide like a bitch,” CeCe told one of her girlfriends. “Mike Black is a real man. And I’m gonna get him.”

“You’re such a flirt. How can he resist you?” her girlfriend replied.

CeCe had been leaving word for Black with anybody she could think of, but days had gone by and she still hadn’t heard from him. She was starting to think that maybe she wasn’t as irresistible as she thought she was.

When the detectives came to interview her for a second time and asked her if she knew Mike Black, CeCe started to ask them if they could get a message to him, but she didn’t think they’d do it. So, when Richards and Kirk left her apartment, they still had nothing to go on.

“Any ideas?” Kirk asked.

“I’m fresh out,” Richards confessed and slumped in his seat.

“What do you do when you’ve got nothin’?” Kirk asked and started the car.

“What?”

“You go make something happen.”

“Where we goin’?”

“Taking a ride downtown.”

“What for?”

“To talk to agent Vinnelli,” Kirk said as he drove. “See what he can tell us about The Commission.”

“You think he might know something about these guys?”

“Not really, but you never know.”

“I think you just like fuckin’ with the guy,” Richards said.

“I do.” After his conversation with Black, Kirk knew that sooner or later he would hear that DeFrancisco was dead. That didn’t bother him. In a way, he agreed that he had to die. Justice?

His concern was about Vinnelli.

Would Black really try to kill a DEA agent? Kirk didn’t know.

Kirk had briefly entertained the idea of warning Vinnelli that Black was on to them and that he’d be coming. But he knew Vinnelli was dirty and suspected that he was the one who hired Kip Bartowski, the man that killed Shy.

Kirk had found a cigarette butt in the laundry room at Black’s house. They were able to pull a partial print off of it. It came back that Bartowski was United States Army, Special Forces. He was reported killed in a training accident on October twenty-seventh nineteen ninety eight. His helicopter went down and the body was never recovered. “How a dead man could smoke a cigarette at a crime scene?” Kirk remembered asking Vinnelli during their investigation.

Even though he didn’t say it, Kirk felt Black knew that Vinnelli was involved in the murder of his wife. So he had a decision to make.

Not my problem, Kirk decided. If Vinnelli is murdered, it would be a Federal matter. No one will ask me for my help. I been trying to get Black for murders I know for a fact that he committed and couldn’t. Let’s see if they can do any better. If they ask me, I’ll tell them what I know, but they won’t ask. That he was sure of. But he did enjoy harassing Vinnelli, now more than ever.

While waiting almost a half-hour for Vinnelli, Richards occupied the time by flirting with the receptionist and pumping her for information about Vinnelli. He and Kirk had been there so many times over the last few months that the agent didn’t bother coming to the lobby to greet them.

“Send them back. They know the way,” Vinnelli told the receptionist. When the detectives were seated before